Lightroom 4 Presets – HDR Effect Part 2

A couple of months ago I released some HDR presets for Lightroom 4 Beta. With some changes in the beta, as well as some changes in the way I’ve been processing photos, I came up with a few updates to them so I figured I’d post ‘em here. There’s 3 different versions of it (Light, Medium, and Strong) and each has a few of the new sliders incorporated into it as well as some other settings. You can replace the old ones if you’ve already downloaded these as they’re not meant to sit along side of them. As always, let everyone know what you think. However, I caution you now… if you’re one of those that don’t like HDR photos then you may want to consider staying away from these presets I’m just sayin’.

Here’s a quick Before/After (click for larger image):

? Download the presets here.
? Here’s a link to a video that shows you how to install the presets

Matt is the full-time Director of Education for Kelby Media Group and a Tampa-based photographer. He's the Editor-in-Chief of Lightroom Magazine, the lead instructor on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom LIVE Seminar Tour and author of several best-selling Photoshop books. Matt also hosts the world's top Lightroom blog, LightroomKillerTips.com, where he's built up a massive library of Lightroom videos, presets and tips. In addition to teaching Photoshop, Lightroom and photography seminars around the world, he's an instructor at Photoshop World and one of the full-time staff writers for Photoshop User Magazine.

When I use the HDR preset I get really bad black ghosting around parts of the image. I have been using the preset for several months and it just started doing it. I can’t figure out how to fix it or what what wrong. Any suggestions?

It seems to me that if the “R” in HDR means “range”, then it should be a measurable value. E.g., If you can measure from “x” (say, the brightest end of the highlight) to “z” the darkest range of the shadows and do that over 3 bracketed images (or whatever number you choose) then you could, indeed have a measurable set of values that would define “HDR” vs what appears to simply be an effect applied to a single image, because that single image would obviously have a smaller measurable range from highlight to shadow. Make sense?

I have downloaded your two sets of presets for LR4 and followed your guidelines. While in the Develop module, right clicking on User Presets, I select Import but when I get to where I have extracted the ZIP files, the presets are greyed out. Not sure what is going wrong?

If you are using a previous version of LR it will not work. Also, if you are using LR4 and you are trying on it on a LR3 filmstrip, it will not work either; you’d need to update your filmstrip to the new LR4 processing by clicking on the exclamation sign displayed to the bottom right of a picture.

I have Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS3, but Adobe’s creeping bloat has rneutd me off Photoshop, and I have no plans to upgrade to CS4 (nor do many other users, as Adobe’s dismal sales of CS4 show). It doesn’t help that Lightroom is 64-bit on my Mac when Photoshop isn’t, despite being the new kid on the block.The fact Lightroom is written in a modern interpreted language (Lua) rather than C++ is what gives the Lightroom team its agility and ability to deploy new features much faster then the teams stuck in the past with legacy languages and frameworks.

It looks like some of your LR presets no longer work properly in LR 4. For example, the Surreal presets (some of my favorites) no longer produce the same effect. Do you plan to update any of your presets that used sliders that are no longer available in Lightroom? I’m sure many of us would be thrilled if you did! Thanks!

Matt, I’ve been enjoying your videos on Kelby Training. I just discovered (you probably knew this…) that one advantage to using ratings to “grade” your photos is that when (if) you look at your Windows Explorer folder containing the images the ratings show up there. Very handy! I do agree that there should be only “0” and “5” ratings.

Very nice presets. Also, I’m watching your KT videos on LR4. I absolutely love the black/white point tip in the develop module. I had always used LR’s curves to do that, with less pleasing effect and more work.

I’m looking forward to finding time to continue watching. Soft proofing is really intriguing and I’m hoping for an equally elegant time saver.

Hi Scott,My internet speed is very poor and I might not be able to watch the live seisson. I’d like to ask you if there will be any chance to download your webminar or see it later?I’m sure that photowalk will be a blast!